uth; no shirking it, no tampering with it! You've struck out for
that--you've never compro--"

"No. Oh, no," said Canby, waking up a little. "Of course you've got to
make a little change or two in plays. You see, you've got to make an
actor like a play or he won't play it, and if he won't play it you
haven't got any play--you've only got some typewriting."

Rieger set his foot upon the step and rested his left forearm upon his
knee, and attitude comfortable for street debate. "Admitting the truth
of that for the sake of argument, and only for the moment, because I
don't for one instant accept such a jesuitism--"

"Yes," said Canby dreamily. "Yes." And, with not only apparent but
genuine unconsciousness of this one-time friend's existence, he turned
and walked back into the lobby, and presently was vaguely aware that
somebody near the street doors of the theatre seemed to be in a temper.
Somebody kept shouting "Swell-headed pup!" and "Go to the devil!"
at somebody else repeatedly, but finally went away, after reaching a
vociferous climax of even harsher epithets and instructions.

The departure of this raging unknown left the lobby quiet; Canby had
gone near to the inner doors. Listening fearfully, he heard through
these a murmurous baritone cadencing: Talbot Potter declaiming the
inwardness of "Roderick Hanscom"; and then--oh, bells of Elfland faintly
chiming!--the voice of Wanda Malone!

He pressed, trembling, against the doors, and went in.

Talbot Potter and Wanda Malone stood together, the two alone in the
great hollow space of the stage. The actors of the company, silent
and remote, watched them; old Tinker, halfway down an aisle, stood
listening; and near the proscenium two workmen, tools in their hands,
had paused in attitudes of arrested motion. Save for the voices of the
two players, the whole vast cavern of the theatre was as still as the
very self of silence. And the stirless air that filled it was charged
with necromancy.

Rehearsal is like the painted canvas without a frame; it is more like a
plaster cast, most like of all to the sculptor's hollow moulds. It needs
the bronze to bring a statue to life, and it needs the audience to bring
a play to life. Some glamour must come from one to the other; some wind
of enchantment must blow between them--there must be a magic spell. But
these two actors had produced the spell without the audience.

And yet they were only reading a wistful little love-scene th